I mean it's an inherently anti-consumer policy, the question is if that hit to consumer choice is worth it for the manufacturers that are getting a leg up, or to kneecap a foreign adversary who's making a play at market capture.
Trump doesn't have anything close to the market awareness to make these judgement calls with any degree of accuracy outside of tariffing literally everything that's imported and hoping it hits some of the right spots.
I mean, tariffs can definitely make sense if a country is making extremely cheap alternatives that destroy the local industry or if another country sells insanely cheap options to get a monopoly on the market to then increase the price.
Problem is that that country is miles ahead in the technology of the other country's local industry and has fine do through economies of scale while the other country keeps on pumping out high margin versions of their inferior product
There is an economic argument that goods are selling at the clearing rate. We sell widgets for $5 because that's the price point at which we move the most number of widgets and therefore generate the most revenue.
If we start taxing imported widgets by $1/ea, the retailer has to choose between stocking the domestic widget (expensive but no tax) versus the imported widget (cheap but taxed). But they still want to maximize the units sold, so they won't raise the price above $5.
There is a counterargument that tariffs will cause importers to redirect their supply to other countries. That drives the gross inventory down over time and raises the clearing price above $5.
But, broadly speaking, tariffs will raise the price of goods that we can't efficiently make in the US while the price of goods we can make will remain largely unchanged. So this then raises the question, What Do We Make in the United States Today?
The question is: what should we be making in the US?
Tariffs can give domestic manufacturing a temporary reprieve from lower priced foreign suppliers, to build or improve domestic manufacturing.
They can also be used to try to punish other countries for unfair trading practices
For example
- 100% tariffs on Chinese manufactured EVs are claimed to be in retaliation on for unfair Chinese government subsidies
- US government is offering incentives to domestic EV manufacturers and purchasers of domestically produced EVs, which could help build domestic production, in conjunction with temporary tariffs
I’m not convinced that they’ve put this much thought into it, nor that domestic manufacturers will use this window of opportunity
Is there really any way to get us making things again?
Part of me feels like that would be better for workers, but I'm kind of a dumbass
That's how import taxes work. Now you may have incentive to spend your money at the local manufacturer, instead of chinese one, and he may have more money to buy whatever services you provide.
There is enough of dumb shit you can attack trump for, no need to attack him for the one that actually makes sense.
Tariffs only make sense when you can outcompete or at least get parity with your opposition. We can't do that immediately and Trump is like a child who never had to wait for anything because he's quite literally a child who's never had to wait for anything.
But this is a very stupid one that he doesn’t seem to understand how to work it. Let me give you one example that hit last time this asshole was in office.
My spouse works for one such import company. While it is US based it gets its metals and product from China and a few other Asian markets.
I wont get into the details as to what all they make but they provide a lot of various hardware items that you find in the large retail hardware outlets.
When Orange Man did this last time, guess what happened? They simply increased the prices to compensate and pushed all that down the line to consumers. When the bottom dollar got bad enough they laid off employees. Same thing happened at some of the other companies she worked with.
Thing is the US hardly manufacture anything, anymore. In fact a lot of the metals and other stuff we no longer mine. It’s easy to say ‘This makes sense’ well no, it doesn’t - he is running his mouth again to get votes without considering the long term effects of how it will damage the economy even worse.
You're only looking at and mentioning the short term effect, not any long term effects, and then criticizing others for the same thing. The long term effect is inefficient businesses like your spouses company shuts down, and local production increases at all levels.
Global ecomonies are incompatible with life on Earth, as we have learned.
Thing is the US hardly manufacture anything, anymore.
tbf, we manufacture a lot still. It's just typically things that require skilled workers and advanced machinery, not common consumer goods. The only consumer goods we produce in large values anymore are cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and handheld electronics.
Tariffs tend to make all sides poorer. We benefit from cheap imports, because those imports serve as inputs to our companies. Additionally, tariffs on our side tend to be matched by tariffs on the other sides which will hurt exports. There’s no realistic scenario where a broad tariff benefits the local economy.
We benefit from cheap imports
in a similar way you benefit from first few cheap heroin doses. so, not really.
my country officials were bowing and saluting to china cargo planes carrying masks and syringes during covid and there were real fear they if they did not, the plane might not have landed. we had indeed no capability to produce syringes and masks at home.
being dependent on china, which is euro-atlantic civilization’s geopolitical enemy number one, is not smart long term strategy.
Tariffs, especially irresponsible ones like those of Trump, are just price increases for consumers in both countries and subsidies for domestic companies making an inferior and/or expensive product.
To be fair, it's corporations choosing to raise the price instead of making less money. You see this exact argument from the other side when the left wants to make the wealthy pay taxes. Either way it's a deeply flawed argument.
You mean like the tariffs to EVs that Biden announced?
Those taxes didn’t really impact many things that American consumers can already buy.
They mostly hit Chinese manufacturers that were on the edge of releasing sub-40k EV in the US. Example: Geely’s Volvo ex30. That thing is a very compelling alternative to what Tesla offers.
How dare you point out the hypocrisy?! Seriously though, people downvoting you need to understand that while democrats are better than trump on most issues, they're largely the same on this particular issue, so it's not exactly a point that can be pinned solely on trump.
Too bad Biden kept the tariffs Trump instituted during his term and increased them. Trump will add even more tariffs during his term, but I'm not confident that the democrat that follows won't also keep and add onto them.
